He told us why it was so named.....'because you had to get your arse on a certain rock to get down the pitch'...

There's a passage in Whiterock, Mulu called 'Matrimony' as Tim had waited for me to join him out in Borneo before he explored it - who said romance was dead A fine day's exploration which ended at a pitch. Others went back, the lead soon ended and was called 'Grounds for Divorce'...

So what about the first three pitches in Strans Gill Pot – Faith, Hope, and Charity?I’ve never checked this with the discoverers/explorers, but I guess they’re based on a passage from the Bible in which St Paul writes to the Corinthians: ‘I commend unto thee, these three: faith, hope, and charity, and the greatest of these is charity'.

So – when you go down SGP you need faith in your capacity to get back up the first pitch (it's a bit tight); you can only hope you’ll get back up the second (it's a tad awkward); but the third is a socking big shaft in a huge rift (maybe 20–30 m by 10–15 and 45 m deep) – so ‘the greatest of these is charity’!

And as for 'Lady Blue's Underwater Fantasy' . . . that's a whole different scenario . . . but there really was a (beautiful) Blue Lady.

I think so Fulk - it's a common triplet, notably the Idwal slabs, those 3 routes supposedly being the first 3 tourist sport climbs. No idea how that claim is validated. But given they were named that I'm the hey day of the Empire, you can be sure it's the theological trinity.

Two days after my wedding I went caving in Fresnedo and we found a fair bit of new stuff, which we named appropriately. From the Matienzo website:

Just beyond the chamber is a 15m pitch and the start of The Honeymoon Series.Traversing to the left at the pitch head (rope protection required) gains a high rift passage leading to A Bit On The Side, a 24m high aven. A 2m climb at the back of the aven leads to a traverse over loose boulders around the top of Oh Wow!! chamber some 7m below. This pops out onto a balcony looking back into A Bit On The Side about 6m up from the floor. At the top of A Bit On The Side there appears to be a very large passage and the rock here looks excellent for bolting. The bottom of the 15m pitch is a large chamber, Trouble & Strife, from which there are two ways on. The first is to follow the obvious downstream passage, All Downhill From Here. This continues in a southerly direction through waist and then chest deep water until a final sump is reached in deep silt. This passage heads almost directly back under Howard's Way, some 15m above, and is presumed to be the upstream continuation of Howard's End. At the back of the sump pool, a mud bank leads to a boulder choke in a small chamber. There is a possible passage leading out of this chamber, but it would require some serious digging. The other way on from Trouble & Strife is up a 3m pitch on its north side. This leads up a cobble slope in high passage and appears to end at a boulder choke. However, the way on is to climb onto a large, poised boulder from behind and then step off into a crawl at head-height over a drop. A second, more difficult, climb down is then met, but this can be bypassed via a wriggle between boulders on the left. A section of rift passage is then followed until a deep hole, Tying the Knot, is encountered (undescended, looks blind), with an in-situ traverse belayed to naturals. Water can be heard here and a large streamway, Honeymoon Period, is soon met. Downstream is Holey Matrimony, a sloping, possibly slippery, climb of about 4m, which has yet to be descended. Upstream, the passage is as tall as 15m high and is liberally decorated with calcite and straws, with glorious white calcite lining the streambed. This fine passage continues for some distance, ascending a short climb and passing over several loose boulder piles. The first boulder pile appears to have a small side passage on the right, likely choked; the second has an aven with a small passage seen above; the third boulder pile has a large, draughting side passage, Extramarital Inlet, coming in from the right behind boulders (unentered). Continuing upstream past fine formations, the passage soon degenerates in size until a boulder choke, Hitting the Rocks, is met. A crawl at stream level leads into a very small continuing passage that becomes blocked with large boulders at Irreconcilable Breakdown.

Anyone interested in the origin of Lady Blues Underwater Fantasy might find a slightly better clue in the excellent KCC 50 years journal (which Fulk will, of course, be very aware of).

By the way, it wasn't me that can claim to have named "Arson Shaft"; I just happened to be around at the time and that was explained to me by one of the explorers when I was a youth.

Moving on to the Peak District, wasn't "Grip Sheets Tomb" an anagram? I'll not give you the answer but see if you can work it out. (Mark N - you're not allowed to comment!) The additional clue (for those in the know) is "master caver".

In Peak Cavern's Far Sump Extension, "Fingernail Chamber" got its name after a flattened finger end (and much swearing) when accidentally hit with the bolting hammer. "Balcombe's Way" is named after the late F.G.Balcombe, founder member of the CDG. Not long before he passed away he'd generously bought a Bosch drill for those involved in exploring beyond Far Sump, thus preventing any more squashed fingers due to hand bolting.

The "Total Perspective Vortex"? Well, anyone familiar with Douglas Adams' hilarious books might like to ponder on just how wiped out the explorers felt on a certain heavily loaded and dehydrating 15 hour trip. "The Ride of the Valkyries" had been on my cassette player in the car on the drive to Castleton (that dates it!); it was in my head as we dropped the 60 m pitch for the first time and just seemed right for such a superb shaft.

"Salmon's Cavern" - pretty obvious really; Les Salmon was a leading BSA North Midlands Group member, made famous by being the subject of the photograph on the dust jacket on Jim Lovelock's 1963 book "Life and Death Underground". But the main justification for naming this atmospheric chamber after him is the legacy of magnificent documentation about Peak District caves he left for future explorers, including many hints and clues which have since been followed up and turned good.

As for Titan - DAN may add detail here but basically the word "Titanic" is reserved for anything extraordinarily large, which certainly applies to that great cleft under Castleton Moor. (Titan is of course Saturn's largest moon, also gigantic). Actually, DAN could probably give us a lot of names' meanings as he's come up with plenty of excellent ones himself.

If i'm not mistaken Wayne Sheldon compiled a list of cave names with the explanation of their origin, i think targeted on Peak Cavern. Not sure what he was planning to do with it, but i enjoyed reading it. Hopefully it can be shared...

I think there are a few Far Canals around.There is one in Ogof Carno, the Far Canal, named as this is what the original explorers said when they found it. Then of course there is 'C' Sump, although there aren't A or B sumps.

This may be common knowledge but Magnetometer pot was so named because the entrance was filled in many years ago using rail tracks as support for the top soil. The entrance was since discovered using a magnetometer to locate the ferrous iron in the rails. These are still evident at the pinch point in the ent.

He's right; this was done by the late Dr.Jack Myers of Austwick. He was a geophysicist based in the Mining Dept at Leeds University, so he had access to some interesting toys which weren't commonly available generally in those days. I'm pretty sure his original data from this exercise are still in the NPC Library in fact. (Just saying, in case it's ever useful in future to know this material exists - might be something the CREG folk are interested in, for example.)

We chose Skyfall because rocks kept falling on our head and the film came out at the same time.

Culdesac Pot cus it never went anywhere.

Roses Rift , Prices Purgatory cus I was saving my name for something better. ( it never happened )

We chose Resurrection in Reservoir cus it fitted in with Willies Easter theme ( Golgotha ) which we continued with Ascension and Heaven's Landing. Resurrection also said something about us.

Viagara Rift as we all thought we were old even back then. ( Shatter Cave )

Hammer and Chisel Rifts ( WL ) cus that's how we found them.

Pink Pillar Chamber in Withyhill cus the pillar is pink. Bobarabath's Bath was named after Bob Whitaker who worked for the Bristol and Avon River Authority and lived in Bath.

WL was after Whitaker and Lavis who first noticed it.

I never liked the name Shatter Cave though at the time nobody came up with a better one.

Vurley is currently a problem.

As yet I dont know where Vurley comes from and we have named none of the pitches. That due to no survey and the fact that we are all likely to disagree. I do have ideas though.

I liked my name Never Ever Land in Potters Heaven, Reservoir as it is the antithesis of Never Land in Upper Flood. ( not officially accepted ). Willie had a good sense of humour.

Naming stuff is not as easy as it sounds. A name should reflect the character of a place or link it to an event at the time. A sequence of linked names is good. ( Dickens theme ).

A few more I liked and was involved with -

The Giant Pebbles of Doom - Reservoir. ( above The Silo which is another one of mine ).

WISh You Were Here. Willie Stanton's initials and the fact that we had to wait a week for others to return to find The Frozen Deep. ( which actually was frozen once and the view we had looked like a stream of ice was flowing down the wall ).

Green and Smelly passage, in the Easegill System, is a gross misnomer, conjuring up as it does an evil place – more like a sewer than a cave.

As I understand it, it was so-called because a group of cavers were underground exploring new cave and walking along a very pleasant passage, when suddenly they were assailed by acrid fumes from a smoke-bomb set off on the surface near a draughting hole by some friends of theirs; the smoke was followed shortly by the water's turning bright green, as the fluorescein that had been intodued into a stream sink (by the same surface group) reached them.

So Green and Smelly were very temporary phenomena, but the (rather unfortunate) name stuck.

'Ignorance is Bliss' is another Easegill name, this time with rather more pleasant connotation. Again, as I understand it, a youg lad named Ron Bliss had caught the caving bug and got the bit well and truly between his teeth as he joined the early exploration of the Easegill caves – which, at the time, were known as the near series of County Pot (Oxford Pot at the time, of course). Anyway, he evidently 'discovered' several passages that had already been entered, and his efforts were indulged by the older members of his group.

So when he really did find a new passage, I gather that the other guys didn't believe him at first; when they found that he'd discovered a route through to the back end of Lancaster Hole, they called it after him – 'Ignorance is Bliss'.

Again in Easgill, I don't know who was first to reach Holbeck Junction, but the 'real' Holbeck Junction is (or at least, it was) a major junction on the railway just outside Leeds. So I guess that the guys who were first there came from somehwere near Leeds and named it accordngly. Maybe 'Main Line Terminus' and 'Main Line Passage' continued the railway theme?

A name that a couple of us have been mulling over recently is "Shistol Pot", named by the Yorkshire Ramblers. I always assumed it was a malapropism, given their tendency for bearing firearms when they were caving.